Lately I've been working on scripts to check and set security and configuration settings for SQL Server using PowerShell. One of the settings that I normally set and forget at install time is the Authentication Mode setting. Best practices suggest that you set this to Windows Authentication, but my experience has been that it's always better to ...

When you're trying to set up scripts to deploy policies to your servers (because you ALWAYS automate with PowerShell, right?), it can be sometimes difficult to determine exactly what facets are there, and when you do know the facet name, what properties are available to you. First, in a native PowerShell window you'll need to load the assemblies ...

PowerShell is an amazing tool to help you automate your administrative processes. There are a lot of books and online sources to help you learn PowerShell, but how do you learn how to use it with SQL Server? Simple, just sign up for my PASS PreCon session. Here's the outline: Use PowerShell to Get the Most out of SQL Server Module 1: ...

Last week I presented a couple of sessions at Tech Ed NA in New Orleans. It was a great experience, even though my demos didn't always work out as planned. Here are the sessions I presented: DAT01-INT Administrative Demo-Fest for SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2008 provides a wealth of features aimed at the DBA. In this demofest of features we'll ...

I'll be presenting two sessions this Saturday (March 6, 2010) in Charlotte - Automate SQL Server Administration with PowerShell and Gather SQL Server Performance Data with PowerShell. The event takes place at the Microsoft Charlotte Offices on 8050 Microsoft Way, Charlotte, NC 28273. For more information please visit SQLSaturday.com or email us ...